The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1887-08-18
RAILROAD ABUSES AND ACCIDENTS.

The terrible railroad disaster at Chats
worth calls attention to two matters, on
of railroad regulation, the other OF TRACK
building, about which strict and uncnang
ing laws should at once be enacted all owe
the United States. II should be maue
nenal offense for two engines to be sent
out with one passenger train. All iooo'
motive engineers know the dangers OF this
doubling-up process, and none OF Ineil
600 o, ba snpt ont in the second or hind
most engine. A moments reflection VIII
show the way in which the usual ana nee
assorv neril is increased. The front en-
cine is the one to sight all danger, as
from mis- placed switch, broken rail- or
a burning bridge, the engine just oehinu
it is helpless as its view is cut OH; ana
vet 1. is this second engine that alone
can use the air-brakes to stop the
train. So, of necessity, very precious
time is wasted after the engineer IN
the first locomotive discovers the danger
until he can signal the engineer behind
him to cut off the steam and put on the
air brakes. Nor is this all. A tremen-
dous string of cars, too heavy for one
engine to pull, is put behind two engines
Now. calculate the momentum of this vast
weight rushing along at thirty five miles
an hour, and then consider that a train,
requiring two engines to start or pull 1t
along with any degree of speed, has TO
rely upon being stopped by the air
brakes of only one Of the engines. II
plenty of time was given within which TO
make the stop this might answer, but,
when danger is discovered only hundred
yards away, it is doubtful if one engine
engine could stop five or six cars, much
less sixteen, as in the case of the train
wrecked in the ChatswOrth horror. Ii
that train had been run in two sec
tions, and the sections keEt ten or
fifteen minutes apart, the catastrophe
might have been averted flor it is in
evidence that the engineer on the first
locomotive saw the fire over hundred
yards ahead of him), or, at all events,
only half the train would have been
wrecked and half the number of lives
lost.
The second matter is the using by rail
roads of SO much wooden trestling in the
laying of their tracks. Iron is now very
cheap, and the railroads should be COM
PEELED to build their bridges, however
small they may be, with this material,
which does not burn, and is not liable to
those accidents of chance locomotive
spark or fire from a burning prairie.
The Chatsworth affair, in damage suits,
will cost that railroad enough for them to
have built every bridge they had of the
best of iron and gilded them with gold.
1t is false economy to thus triflo with
accident-inviting timber when iron can
the better be employed.
Another point in this connection might
be referred to-there would seem to be no
necessity for running these pleasure ex-
cursion trains at such tremendously
high rate of speed. Women and children
compose the burden of the freight, aud
their lives are too precious to be carelessly
imperiled, and when no occasion of bust
ness or necessity compels it. Railroad
matters in these particulars certainly need
very material correction, and it is hig h
time it was being applied.